


Foxglove

by inelegantly (Lir)



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Adrenaline kink, Aftercare, Asphyxiation, Breathplay, Canon Compliant, Cohabitation, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Poisoning Fantasies, Power Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 09:10:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15603072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/inelegantly
Summary: Shiraishi and Yukimura spend some time together in their garden. Yukimura lovingly describes how Shiraishi might die by poisoning; Shiraishi is a little too into Yukimura's unconventional flirtation techniques. They both settle on breathplay as the logical next step.





	Foxglove

**Author's Note:**

> This was written over Valentine's Day week for the [tenipuri shipname fest](https://tenipurifests.dreamwidth.org/1320.html) in response to the proposed ship name "foxglove pair." I chose to associate the name with Shiraishi and Yukimura because they are both associated with plants and on Shiraishi's part, poisonous plants in particular. Yukimura's tennis ability also involves the removal of his opponent's senses, which is reminiscent of poisoning. Foxgloves are poisonous.
> 
> Or: I came back to Prince of Tennis after about TWELVE YEARS and decided to write the most self-indulgent thing possible in relation to my own interests: fic where somebody gets choked out. Now cross-posted to AO3!

-

The day is warm, the summer sun beating down on Shiraishi's back as he arches it, turning his face up toward a vast and cloudless sky. He holds the pose, breathing in the familiar scents of baked earth and green growing things, letting the peace of the garden soak into his limbs before transitioning smoothly into the next pose in his routine. His sweaty skin sticks to the yoga mat he'd spread on the grass, a reminder that there is more to the world than the clean stretch of his muscles and the plants all around him, but a reminder Shiraishi finds easy to ignore.

He continues with his yoga, letting his mind settle as his body does the work. They are two parts of a whole that he is bringing into concert; when he reaches the last pose he is sweat-slicked and loose-limbed, thoughts buoyed up by his efforts and floating on the easy sense of contentment he's achieved.

Shiraishi lets the pose go, settling instead with legs stretched before him and arms canted back, propping himself up on his palms. His calves slide against the vinyl and his shirt is soaked through; the day is hotter than he'd realized, but that hadn't stopped him from pushing himself. There is a water bottle he'd left lying beside him in the grass. He picks it up, head tipping back as he takes smooth, long swallows from the bottle, drinking until he's emptied it by half.

His eyes are closed, head still tipped back and the sun on his face, when a shadow falls across him and blocks the light.

He doesn't immediately look. He's too well at ease, choosing instead to listen to the soft _snick_ of gardening shears closing and then opening again, to the dry rustle of branches moved by gentle hands. The sound of footsteps is absent, but this gardener always has been light on his feet.

"Seiichi," Shiraishi says, and opens his eyes.

Yukimura spares him a sideways glance, though his hands remain occupied with the hedges standing at Shiraishi's back. For a long minute silence reigns, broken only by the clean _snick, snick, snick_ of the gardening shears doing their work. A trail of dead flower heads falls in Yukimura's wake, clipped off to make way for new life to grow. Even wrapped in his gardening gloves, Yukimura's hands move deftly, smooth and sure.

"Don't stop on account of me," Yukimura murmurs, eyes downcast and watching his work.

"I'm not," Shiraishi says, tilting his head back further to observe. "I was already done."

Yukimura pauses, considering that, before closing his shears with a more decisive scrape as the blades come together. He turns, and the shadow of his body once again falls across Shiraishi. The sun is behind him; it shines gold through his hair so that the strands glow a near-electric blue in the light, creating an otherworldly radiance that leaves Shiraishi momentarily transported. He blinks, and Yukimura moves, taking advantage of Shiraishi's moment of wonder to appear at his side as if he'd been there all along.

Yukimura is funny like that. He's folding his legs beneath himself as Shiraishi finds his focus, perched on the edge of Shiraishi's yoga mat so that his side just barely bumps Shiraishi's knee. His posture is prim and composed in contrast to Shiraishi's post-exercise bonelessness, spine straight, the shears set off to the side. An expectant feeling rises up in Shiraishi's chest and he lets it, allows it to build until he's filled with the sense of _waiting,_ of feeling that something is about to begin.

"How often do you come out here, Kuranosuke?" Yukimura asks.

"Every day," Shiraishi replies. "If I'm able."

He suspects that Yukimura already knows this, because he is an observant man, and because it is his garden as much as it belongs to Shiraishi. But this is very like Yukimura as well: prising away the layers of a person with knife-point accuracy, until he gets to the heart of what he wants to see.

"But not for gardening every day," Yukimura says. "You're getting lazy."

Shiraishi snorts, a surprised little huff of breath that doesn't quite manage to sound offended. He may not be as active as he was playing tennis in school, but he is hardly _lazy._

"I take care of my plants," Shiraishi insists.

"Mmm," Yukimura hums to himself. "I suppose that you do. Yours always have been lovely. I remember thinking as much the first time I saw them, back at that camp we happened to go to."

Shiraishi still has some of those plants. He prefers perennials for the way they come back year after year, exemplary of the tenacity of life and all the more beautiful for it. He likes poisonous plants for similar reasons: often the deadliest flowers are the most beautiful, and that threat concealed behind lovely, delicate blossoms holds an allure that has always fascinated him.

"You brought a torikabuto to camp," Yukimura continues. "Didn't you?"

Yukimura knows that he did. Aconite is another perennial; that same plant -- or its descendent, depending on how one looked at things -- still graces their windowsill with its spray of violet blooms.

"I did," Shiraishi says. "I remember that you liked it."

Yukimura smiles, a slow curl of his lips that makes Shiraishi think of the fronds of ferns unfurling in a forest's cool shade. Yukimura's thigh rests against Shiraishi's thigh; his hands rest on his own knees. They are still in Yukimura's slim gardening gloves. Casually, he begins to strip them off.

"You must have worn gloves," Yukimura says, as he folds his together and deliberately sets them aside. They lie in the grass with the shears, with the water bottle, with the things Yukimura has pushed away, as if the very concepts they represent are no longer his concern. "When you potted the torikabuto, I mean."

"Of course," Shiraishi says.

Yukimura's hand is resting on his knee, fingers curled against the bare inside of his thigh, just beneath where the hem of his shorts cuts off. His sense of expectation uncurls within his breast, filling it up tighter, the way kudzu grows to cover everything it can reach. Yukimura's fingertips are cool and dry, contrasted with Shiraishi's sun-warmed, still faintly sticky skin. Yukimura circles them, and the shiver his touch produces crawls all the way up Shiraishi's spine.

"I'm glad," Yukimura says. "The toxins in that plant can be absorbed through the skin, and everyone knows the roots are worst of all."

_Everyone knows._

Shiraishi is relieved, in hindsight, that his room assignment for camp had been with Fuji and Yukimura. Because everyone _didn't_ know that aconite could poison them with a touch alone, but he'd been young and proud of his alluring, dangerous flora, and hadn't thought twice over bringing it into the company of other nosy teenagers who may have rifled through his stuff.

Yukimura leans forward, shifting his weight toward Shiraishi and setting his free hand against the grass. The hand against Shiraishi's leg skates higher, so that the muscles in his thigh jump and prompt Yukimura to pat him like he might a skittish horse, on its flank, before he pulls his hand away.

He is still very close to Shiraishi, legs twisting until he rolls onto his stomach to lie beside Shiraishi on the mat.

"Do you know the effects of aconite poisoning, Kuranosuke?"

He does. But he doesn't say as much. Yukimura's voice is dreamy, soft-edged as if in recollection of a pleasant memory. His mouth quirks, and Shiraishi cannot look away.

"The effects vary with the severity, of course," Yukimura continues. "Too much, and death is almost instantaneous. Less, though... Then there are signs of poisoning, beginning with nausea. Followed by vomiting. You may begin to feel numb, especially about the tongue and mouth, or experience a tingling, burning sensation, spreading from your face and into your chest."

He speaks gently, lying against Shiraishi with just the ghost of a smile curving his lips. His face appears serene, but his eyes are hard and bright, their gaze pinning Shiraishi beneath him.

His breath catches, held tight in his too-full, too-tense chest, and Yukimura's smile stretches infinitesimally wider.

"Shortness of breath is also a symptom. Respiratory distress, as your breathing becomes hard and labored. Your pulse and heartbeat will become weak and irregular. You may feel dizzy, confused."

Yukimura's hand has come to rest against Shiraishi's chest, heavy over his heart, which is beating not at all as Yukimura describes. His pulse is racing fast and heavy, with a drumming building in his ears like a back-beat to Yukimura's slow, seductive words. It occurs to him, only at significant removal, that Yukimura is _flirting._

Only Yukimura would choose to sweet-talk him by lovingly describing how easy it might be for Shiraishi to die.

"The entire process may last as little as two hours," Yukimura says, pushing with his palm until Shiraishi lets his arms fold, falling onto his back beneath him.

"Most likely," Yukimura says, "you will die by paralysis of the heart. But when your body is examined, you will appear as if asphyxiated."

Shiraishi stares up at Yukimura, who is still smiling, still composed, body held with such poise as he balances over Shiraishi. The only indication of his excitement is the light in his eyes, like a candle held behind a paper screen, casting shadows that Shiraishi has learned well how to read. He is lovelier, caught up in his fantasy of death by poisoning, than any of Shiraishi's carefully-cultivated poisonous flowers -- and deadlier still by far.

But Shiraishi has always loved things that are dangerous, and does not hesitate for a moment to reach up, brushing the backs of his fingers against Yukimura's face.

"I won't poison myself, Seiichi."

"Perhaps not by touch," Yukimura agrees, in that same thoughtful, gentle voice. "But you must consider the dangers of aconite taken by mouth."

Shiraishi knows -- though not through experience -- that the taste of aconite is bitter and foul. Yukimura's mouth tastes far sweeter, as he ducks his head and presses a kiss to Shiraishi's lips. He folds for Yukimura, the thing in his chest unfurling like the blossoming of a hothouse flower, the roots of which have spread all through him. Yukimura's tongue curls deftly against Shiraishi’s own and he moves to meet it, an eager kiss that lasts only seconds before Yukimura is dancing away.

Yukimura has poisoned him, not with tinctures or tonics, but with the seed of longing he's planted within Shiraishi's chest. It's lodged itself within him, tight against his heart, and every word Yukimura speaks is sweet water poured onto the fertile soil it's found.

Yukimura is watching him, holding himself just far enough out of reach so that Shiraishi cannot lean up to kiss him. He weighs what Yukimura might want, speaking sweet words of poison and radiating an excitement Shiraishi feels shining onto him as surely as the warmth of the sun. He weighs it, though the tight feeling in his chest says that he already knows.

"You've poisoned me," Shiraishi says, just to see the way Yukimura's eyes dance as he reigns in his laughter.

It's a joke, and it isn't a joke. Shiraishi takes hold of Yukimura's wrist, guides his hand from where it rests against his chest to instead move up over his throat. He lets go only as Yukimura lets his fingers spread. His eyebrows arch, in silent question.

There are shadows, behind the paper-screens of Yukimura's eyes, and Shiraishi does love to watch the way they shift. Yukimura's hand rests lightly against his skin, barely touching him. It needn't remain so light.

"I ought to experience the effects."

"What are you asking, Kuranosuke?"

It's transparently obvious, but Yukimura never liked the subtlety of others quite as much as he liked his own. Shiraishi takes a breath in, breathing deeply until his chest fills and holding onto that feeling, holding as he lets his entire body relax. He breathes out, smooth and slow and almost enough to calm the still-rapid beating of his heart.

"I'm asking you to go ahead," he says. "Squeeze."

And Yukimura _laughs,_ soft and light as a tinkling of windchimes. He laughs, and he smiles, and his slender fingers close around Shiraishi's throat, tight and sure. There's nothing light about that, nothing gentle, just an ever-increasing sense of pressure as Yukimura's hand slowly closes to seal off Shiraishi's airway.

He breathes.

It's with some effort, but not impossible. He's used to meditative breathing, can take it slow and easy so the air whispers past the grip of Yukimura's hand. He breathes, and Yukimura squeezes tighter, as if chasing each breath through the barrier of Shiraishi's skin.

He breathes, and he watches Yukimura's face. He's lovely as always, expression a mask of porcelain composure, but Shiraishi thinks he can see it slipping at the edges. He breathes, but it's harder, little gasps that must drag past Yukimura's fist so that his lungs start to burn for the effort. He knows how to order his mind and so he is calm, even as the air in his lungs grows short and stale and the lightheadedness starts to creep in, like ghosts at the edges of his vision.

Yukimura's face swims, and Shiraishi's chest seizes. He holds onto his composure only by dint of so much practice, grips in his mind the manifesto that Yukimura would never _truly_ hurt him. Not on purpose. Not in a way Shiraishi didn't like. He holds it in his head but that's no help to his body, which jerks with suppressed panic where it lies between Yukimura's spread thighs.

He's on the edge of what he can bear, holding his stale breath in his lungs because Yukimura has ceased allowing him those little gasps, because his chest burns too fiercely to sneak in any fresh air. He's near his limit but he clings to that edge, needing to feel the vertigo from staring over that precipice down at his doom. Yukimura's face is vague and soft as his vision grays, save for the lights of his eyes, like bright beacons tethering Shiraishi to the harbor of Yukimura's cool ocean gaze.

All he wants is to see the mask slip.

He hears, in the foggy back of his mind that is sluggish with oxygen deprivation, Yukimura's soft voice pronouncing, _you will appear as if asphyxiated._

He lifts his hand, slowly, effortfully, and taps Yukimura twice on the wrist. Yukimura's response is immediate, but careful, the pressure of his fingers easing off as smoothly as if he were turning down a dial. Lowering the volume on Shiraishi's smothered panic, until he sucks in air, and breathes, and breathes, and is calm.

Yukimura's fingertips trail across his neck, so light Shiraishi can barely feel them. His head aches, and his chest aches, and his vision is still fuzzy at the edges, the color seeping back in so slowly. His heart is still racing, and the panic is still there, waiting in the wings of his mind to devour him, if only he'd make the mistake of staring the danger of what they've done in the face.

He knows that something has revealed itself in his expression, risen to the surface while Yukimura choked him so that it was made plain for Yukimura's perusal. Shiraishi doesn't know what it is. It's a gift from him to Yukimura, vulnerability brought to the fore, pulled through the mask that Shiraishi wears the rest of the time and making itself vivid and clear on his face.

Yukimura could have kept going. Shiraishi should have tapped out sooner than he'd done. He must be the one to pull the brakes; if he hadn't, he suspects Yukimura would have continued until he fainted dead away.

It's terrifying, and exciting, and Shiraishi reaches for Yukimura, pulling him in with arms clamped around Yukimura's back until he's held tight against Shiraishi's chest. He knows Yukimura is hard, is excited by seeing Shiraishi walk that knife's edge of terror. But he also knows Yukimura is not going to allow him to do anything about it, that this fact is little more than a footnote clarifying their main activity.

So he simply holds on, carding the fingers of one hand through Yukimura's hair until the tension drains from Yukimura's limbs. It's unclear which of them he's comforting; it never has seemed necessary for Shiraishi to know.

Yukimura starts to scoot back, pulling against Shiraishi's hold, and Shiraishi allows his arms to relax. Yukimura folds his own beneath himself, crossing them over Shiraishi's chest and pillowing his chin on top of them.

"I don't know why you trust me," he says.

Shiraishi doesn't either, not exactly. He just has the sense that he _can,_ that his trust is not something Yukimura will purposefully, willingly violate.

"Do you think that I shouldn't?" Shiraishi chooses to ask in return.

Yukimura hums, uncertain. "It isn't that you shouldn't. But we both know it's unwise that you do."

Shiraishi shrugs as much as he's able, with Yukimura blanketing him entirely. "It's unwise to grow poisonous plants for pleasure, Seiichi. I still do. I still enjoy that."

"Oh, you enjoy it, do you?"

"Very much so."

Yukimura hums to himself again, and though his expression doesn't shift, Shiraishi thinks that he looks pleased. He touches Shiraishi's throat again, which is sore enough for Shiraishi to know there will be bruises, and looks even more pleased with himself.

"Good," Yukimura says. "I enjoy it, too."

They both know he isn't speaking of growing plants any longer. But he leaves them little time to process it, pushing up from Shiraishi's chest and turning himself over. He tucks his head against the crook of Shiraishi's shoulder, and makes a purposeful display of making himself comfortable.

Overhead, the sky is very blue, and at the edges of Shiraishi's vision he can see the branches of the hedges marking the edge of their garden.

"I think we should enjoy it together," Yukimura decides. "Just for a little while."

-

-


End file.
